1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for the treatment of materials, such as textiles, with treatment liquid.
Any operations which are carried out in an aqueous medium and which are applied to textiles, as is the case in treatments involving degreasing, desizing, removing transient colours and dyeing, as well as the operations which follow the above, such as greasing, the imparting of water-repellent characteristics, flameproofing, and the imparting of anti-static characteristics, are defined by the term "treatment".
2. Prior Art
There are known a number of apparatus for forcing treatment liquid such as dyeing, bleaching and other media into and through textile materials such as yarns, tapes and other fabrics that are wound on a perforated cylindrical tube commonly know as "beam." The perforated cylindrical tube is supported concentrically within a cylindrical vessel. The treatment liquid is forced, under high pressure and at high temperature, to penetrate the layers of material outwardly radially from inside of the beam on which the material is wound or wrapped. Difficulty has been experienced with many of the prior art apparatus in securing uniformity of treatment in all portions of the material often resulting in different shades and/or hues both radially and axially of the roll of material.
To eliminate such uneven treatments, it has been proposed, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,206,619, to provide the cylindrical vessel with an upper outlet in addition to a lower outlet located beneath the beam centrally thereof. The upper outlet is disposed at the top of the vessel adjacent to the front end of the beam which end is remote from the inlet of the vessel. The treatment liquid from the upper outlet is discharged out of the vessel via an annular jacket mounted on the vessel. Such a prior apparatus has not been so practical particularly when employed in an apparatus having a series of beams for supporting the materials to be treated. This is because providing the vessel with a plurality of upper outlets, one for each beam, makes the apparatus complex and hence expensive. The present invention is an improvement on this prior art.